Youtube is a video-sharing website created in 2005 and wildly successful with nearly anyone who owns a video camera or has a pair of eyes.  You can find clips from your favorite old soap operas, watch music videos of the past and present, post your daughter's first dance recital, and that video of your hubby falling off the ladder (he was fine, of course).

There are prank videos and misleading videos.  There are people who post video blogs and people who post their opinion on other Youtube videos.  Some videos go "viral" - getting more than 1,000,000 views in a short period of time.  Others are on Youtube forever...hidden and unseen forever.  Most of the videos are good for a laugh - either because they are so funny or because they are so bad!  

There is a lot of singing.  I mean, a lot.  And there are a lot of cute kids.  I mean, a lot.

But there is another side to Youtube that no one ever talks about.  Based on views, it appears a lot of people are seeing these videos.  Based on comments, this suspicion is confirmed.  You'll often see the comment "Oh no, I'm in that part of Youtube again" or "How did I get here?". 

I'm talking about the hundreds of videos posted by parents of their stillborn babies.  I'm talking of the thousands of stories of children with cancer.  And the horrifying stories of child abuse.  There have even been cases of suicide that the world has been exposed to.

There has never been a time when the lonely and suffering could share their pain so openly.  Oddly, this hasn't really made a significant imapct on how we treat one another.  You would think, once the ability to share pain was done so effectively and widespread, you would begin to see and increase in compassion and activism on behalf of victims, but these videos are largely ignored.

But they are out there....

for the morbid and curious and outraged and kindred spirits who want to know they are not alone in a world they see as full of agony.